and realized everything you thought you knew. i'm charged with a big. new year's danger the u.s. is still stuck on the edge of its fiscal cliff with very hours left before a tough mix of tax hikes and spending cuts it hits americans. best gaiters begin at rooting out possible causes from the deadly plane crash in moscow where our correspondent at the scene plants the tragedy step by step. dance from a restive middle east and arab world to europe's money roller coaster and the russian public getting it to be vocal they sum up the major events that shaped the twenty twelve.

year with r t world news and much more twenty four hours a day. trying to pull the u.s. back from the brink of the fiscal cliff couldn't get much closer to the one that in a few hours americans will be hit hard by billions of dollars of tax hikes and spending cuts which will automatically come into effect on tuesday but republicans and democrats just can't agree on how to avert it and time is rapidly running out well here's our washington correspondent. the u.s. congress created this cliff situation when they failed to agree on a budget that would help the country reduce its deficit and its you monger's debt and what they did was what they usually do they put off those important decisions until a certain deadline that deadline is now so they came up with this scary word cliff to create lots of drama around which would be the ordinary maybe somewhat boring

working process of any congress or parliament that is to agree on a budget the need to deadlines so the cliff which actually describes the mode in which the congress is working their inability to make decisions until the very very last minute the cliff that u.s. lawmakers have artificially created could become very real for the. majority of them over one thousand government programs would be cut it would hit the unemployed very hard they would stop getting unemployment benefits there would be other automatic cuts and tax hikes that would mostly affect those who are financially insecure but everyone knows even if the lawmakers don't meet the january first deadline they can pass measures retroactively and at the end of the day they will decide something but congress seems to love the drama of the whole cliff situation they have all the attention in the world and literally the whole world the media of course help them hype it up with the countdown they started two

months ago and while politicians here are enjoying all that attention turning last minute trick scoring political points the hype around the scary word cliff is already hurting the economy experts say it's affecting business and consumer confidence if wall street is any indicator stocks have been falling for a fifth straight day on friday they called it a fiscal cliff slide other markets are reaching signals of certainty coming from the u.s. oil prices have soared in the asian markets ahead of a last minute effort in washington to reach a deal on fiscal cliff that's what you read in the news so this whole charade in washington could have implications on many levels and the fiscal cliff which some call a product of u.s. lawmakers imagination could become a self-fulfilling prophecy and while congress has trouble sorting out a deal to prevent americans are slipping into a tax black hole some agreements just seem to breeze through china growth from want

to wait news experience. welcome the united states of america this is where we govern by crisis we don't have representatives in washington d.c. we have political prostitutes that will go before a camera and say that anything that they have to say is to keep this massive government rolling and you can make special interest influences in washington d.c. for that when the cameras are on you know if they're on the red team they're going out there saying it's the welfare folks as well it's a people on food stamps or the people on extended unemployment benefits if they're on the blue team they're coming out and trying to get their base fired up that it's all about their corporate interests and this is why we can't come up with you but is an enemy when the cameras are off and it's time to pass a trillion dollar nearly trillion dollar defense bill they have no problem whatsoever coming to coming together and holding hands or put that kind of a deal together i think ultimately the hammer is going to fall on the people of

this country it is called austerity nobody in washington d.c. wants to own up to that austerity but eventually it's coming to this country where crash investigators have ruled out the condition of the runway as a cause for saturday's deadly plane tragedy one of moscow's busiest airports the red wings' plane skidded off the runway and plowed into the indictment on a major highway five people who were on board have died while the other three are still fighting for their lives on t.v. or if national looks at how the disaster unfolded. the twenty ninth of december the last working day of two thousand and twelve in russia four pm businesses closed offices forgotten until the next year but i'm always friends employees jump into their cars and escape the busy capital he's got highway heads to the west a region where most of the luxury states and country houses are located traffic jams a common with a song with a day and this time of the year but want to lock the road is almost empty.

passengers come out of the car to see what the sound was a big sack to see anything but not this. just minutes before that and similar to all for what number ninety six i think is london is a little too i told him it was his role in the czech republic the plane touches down but can stall three kilometer on way they had but still the airline is moving too fast experienced crew at that moment very slightly knows already they will not make it the jets reaches the end of the runway runs into the fence but still continues moving it finally stops after overrunning the asteroid by four hundred meters the plane breaks into three parts and tail is lying over the whole year the

road people can easily see its number or a stick for four seven the middle part just bog misses away the cockpit already partially damaged after the crash with a science falls right at the edge of the highway it's a miracle indeed the road is empty at that time this is a ten lane highway the wreckage is only on one of the lanes traffic continues on at least three here even after the tragedy is passing by slowing down to see what happens they notice and left lane called street lights on the roads a very road they usually drive every friday and everybody sings about moment course if i'd have call minutes earlier or was eve i'd have been on that airplane people come out of their cars and try to help out those in the cockpit how ready that. weather conditions technical failure and pilot error are among the investigators

main causes of the incident was most likely a combination of reasons behind a fatal crash however a plane hitting a busy highway. in one of europe's biggest cities could have left much more devastating trail of destruction there wasn't enough log for everyone on that suffered a very brief national party moscow region. well for expert opinion on what to me tells about the plane itself you can head to r.t. dot com. the end of the year in britain also means ploughing through tax return forms before the penalty deadline many people though are already being penalized in the pockets simply by asking for help in filling them out with his overseas. your annual tax return a process that many adults find utterly daunting and perplexing luckily for the british public the tax man has

a whole array of telephone helplines to help and advise people on how to fill in the piles of forms needed for it getting through to someone might be a bit of a problem though britain is spending watchdog says that last year some twenty million phone calls went on the answered by the government tax office and of those lucky enough to get through between the months of april and september over six million people had to wait for over ten minutes just to get an answer from someone and i've decided to give him revenue and customs premium priced phone line a call to find out how long it would take me to get through to them. i've spent over three and a half minutes waiting for someone to pick up the phone. last year customers spent an estimated thirty three million pounds in call charges just waiting to get through to somebody at the tax department exposing what critics call

a shameful level of service him revenue and customs have released a statement saying that they've lowered the cost of calls to one of their premium phone lines the most popular one they also say that they're aware that they weren't able to deliver the standard of service that they're committed to in the past however they're now answering over ninety percent of the calls that are made to them but ultimately critics say that it's the complicated u.k. tax code that spans over seventeen thousand pages that british citizens find it so hard to get their head around and it's the telephone providers that are responsible for the helplines that of cashing in on all the tax confusion. well with the new year just around the corner for many of us we've had a special farewell to fix welfare nutty don't miss our special coverage with live broadcasts from several countries as well as spectacular images of the festivities and some full costs of what to expect in twenty thirty to come before midnight here

in moscow next though recap a major events of the outgoing year after the break. so how much does it take to get into russian politics how many hours of hard work and how many patriotic deeds does it take to become one of the people who make the decisions and the world's largest country well i'll tell you how much it takes exactly seven point five million euros russia's federal investigative committee has a stablished that allegedly hey of and constantine should show from faire russia and the commies prospectively promised for a fee to get a businessman on to their party's electoral lists giving him a spot in the lower house of the duma the investigators have forwarded the state duma an official request to strip the two m.p.'s of their parliamentary immunity and you're darn right they better street have their parliamentary immunity stripped

i mean what's worse than government corruption some people in the government being so corrupt they can actually sell the government itself to someone for a fee so positions of parliament corruption on this high of a level needs to be punished severely breaking rocks in siberia or worse sounds pretty good to me tolerating flagrant corruption does not a great civilization make but that's just my opinion. something. lies beneath. thousands of meters. controlled.

but dangerous even to those who keep it to distance. welcome back here with. what it's already a twenty thirteen in some parts of the world including one of russia's time zones celebrations are in full swing in parts of russia's far east but the rest of the country catching up in the coming hours well as the world gradually welcomes in the new year we look at the events which twenty twelve will be remembered. find out what critics think that after going to trial has reached its and along

with a nine member calendar. but it looked more like this year a decade of war is a. good year for a new. well we're still here and when it comes down to it the world not only didn't end but very little changed in twenty twelve we have the same challenges facing the globe the same conflicts preventing peace the same policies hampering solutions and many of the same people in power as we come into twenty thirteen so what will twenty twelve be remembered for let's take a look back. at some in gaza their world did and when israel launched a short but then big campaign in response to rockets fired by hamas after one of their leaders was the front leading us solidly back israel but critics claim the

use of disproportionate force has become too common a practice for really defense force colonel list also being targeted and children becoming casualties it has the same policy if you like as the united states with regard to collateral damage that it's happy to injure dozens of palestinian men women and children as long as they can kill one person who might have helped fire a rocket into israel shortly after a cease fire palestine celebrated gaining u.n. nonmember status but it's still a long way from state for the region from a state solution israel and palestine this is called the conflict continues to rage in neighboring syria you know that russia trying to possibly stay running his country be. he has to go assad must go but charlotte said the demands and predictions that syria's president would fall in twenty four hours went on for

a pilgrimage if you had sat down for an exclusive interview with r t well into the year insisting he would not give up you know as it was for regime change continued terror reigned and his country of islam i'm not popular wasn't made by people with the with what's going on the country i'm sick and i mean. i may be in syria and i have to be visited him but it's going to be redeemed everything from civil war to sectarian fighting to terrorism to genocide syria stay the center of a media war threw out twenty twelve which unconfirmed atrocities on both sides i want to know whether and only one side the brunt of the blame for assad is crazy he's a brutal dictator reese killing his own people this is the same narrative that we heard about gadhafi. but we didn't hear much about libya in twenty twelve on most networks or from western officials not until the aftermath of regime change there and the terror that ensued went too far u.s. ambassador and embassy staff were killed in benghazi in september the most

significant event two thousand and twelve is the failure of nato to follow up on its on its libya momentum to create a forced regime change through proxy. mercenaries in syria and the fact that russia and china and iran stood firm on. the entire time table that nato at mind around this destabilization. the entire arab spring scenario is it's not disintegrating it's becoming a nightmare one that spread to western allies in the region like bahrain for mass protests to arrest and even death have been provoked much global media coverage or any push for democracy. and. instead provocations like the film the innocence of a muslim made headlines and incited outrage across the arab world funded in the u.s.

and considered highly offensive to islam the movie didn't go over well in states now run by islamist after post revolution polls in egypt and tunisia. u.s. embassies were left in shambles as flags burned and freedom of speech was back on the debate or tonight the film was banned in some countries like russia and defended by others like the states as a protected life of expression right not awarded to whistleblowers like julian assange and who had a busy year and. he was granted political asylum by ecuador after being released on bail while the weighting of british court's decision on his extradition to sweden for most of twenty twelve thousand remained under house arrest but still managed to find the right to leave the can change the world tomorrow his groundbreaking exclusive interview show c'mere on our teens and always found sundown with gas shunned by the mainstream media like has the last house on the front and internet

freedom on his visit to the site where the future of the internet i think it is no journalist with the salt in the world working today has not used a wiki leaks cable whether it be at the lowest level of covering there a local health center to the idea of schools a education let alone geopolitics still many journalists slammed the songes work on r t and he continues to be a man the west and mainstream media love to hate but he remains. holed up at the ecuadorian embassy in london fearing u.k. officials will grab him the moment he steps outside. protests ripped across europe and twenty twelve as the euro crisis worsens leaving many no choice but to go out onto the streets so many people are becoming desperate people of god getting angrier and angrier every plane had millions on the street at a time demanding the government stop cuts and demos continued in greece who got

a forty four billion euro balance masses were met with heavy handed policing in most countries across the e.u. which was awarded a nobel peace prize in twenty trials i am they ultimately if there are too many protests won't be to be able to afford the policemen on the streets and therefore we could actually end up not so much with a violent reaction from government but there's actually a danger of an arcade because government itself may break down the crowd is. not the case in the us where the occupy movement lost momentum this year corporate back media and authorities managed to dull demonstrations demanding economic equality and responsibility is one of a party that there was you know you wait for occupy to extend from its needs and from that. you know usually you write it by the elites as a bunch of anarchist story or students who don't have the scene better to do is to organize themselves to try something the group is promising in twenty thirteen with

some predicting the old ws movement might have better luck in europe. russia stop protests this year leading up to an after vladimir putin was elected for a third time as president but not nearly as big as what we saw at the end of twenty young love and i think the demonstrations in russia would most abated by frustration the demonstrators have a kip that's a cool goal which was to discredit the good of the reputation of the person who did it but you don't. i'm doing those first because i knew that russia is going to win the election they had no choice they had no possibility of beating in an election so they tried to that strategy was instead discredited that used to be at least the west just before putin's inauguration protests in central moscow turned violent for the first time since the recent opposition movement began to rally against the arrests were made in both protesters and police reported injuries

several demonstrators face court hearings on charges of inciting mass public disorder and a dozen more trials will carry on in the new year with the opposition claiming this is all part of a kremlin clamp down on their movement but putin's reelection and protest didn't get nearly as much attention as this. killing if he believed it was the riots rocked riot on the altar of christ the savior and the scandal that followed made world headlines took over the blogosphere and had celebrities like madonna defending them or the russian orthodox church was outraged. there is no defense in this case it's simple p.r. lawyers uncorking up on all of their working towards the brand in order to capitalize on it in the future and it's worked some of the groups girls got two years in jail for the stunt which was criticized by the west as too harsh the story remained in the headlines for weeks on end leaving little room for stories like

this. thank you very much the way u.s. presidential candidate jill stein and her running mate arrested for protesting outside a debate for top party only candidates obama and romney the american system is designed to eliminate political opposition like some of the you know dictatorships that we criticize the debate makes a mockery of our democracy despite being on the ballot in a not states to technically written stein and i. the candidates were not allowed to debate got almost no coverage in the lead up to election i'd us networks third party candidates only chance to debate live on television here for marty's washington studio i think our founding fathers would be spinning it in their graves if they could see this. in line with homes and projections obama won the election with his work cut out for along with other world leaders here to. commie growing

discontent and conflicts either standing still raging while he's now a part. but he can tell us what's gripped your attention most. post a tweet hash tag r.t. recall in your message for to hearing your thoughts and reading some of them out during new year coverage as we approach midnight in moscow but also on like you today britain's busting doctors have been told to take a taste of their own medicine on a website now how to many medics are piling on the pounds being urged to set an example by having gastric bands ditching junk food. like the results slashed off the british. english channel there's a rather over that king of the carbs the french fry both belgium and france claim it's their invention head on line to see who's most convincing.

and one hundred thousand more people could die in syria over the next year and if the government and the opposition don't start talking the prediction that came from the un's international peace envoy lakhdar brahimi also warned that. the country would become a failed state ruled by warlords unless diplomacy is given the chance he's proposed a peace plan involves forming a transitional government based on agreement between authorities and the rebels the opposition is dismissing militia to sign the cease fire or join any talks and that's a person that goes mohamed a member of the syria dialogue organization believes the rebels position is being instigated from abroad. which is why dialogue between all

syrians but as we see the superpowers in the world through the pressure of the opposition. i mean more and more it's getting violent people but if you have a big arsenal were over a large working as we have gone there for a long. after the and it's quite clear where they are coming from the border of. the borders with jordan are slightly off it is well it's obvious that the international award with the word are interested. in smuggling. in boxes like turkey or some part of the love and doing the job for them. more international news for you now this hour a series of explosions in iraq have killed at least ten people and wounded more than forty others seven members of the same family were killed in the largest explosion in the town of musayyib south of baghdad two more died in here well no

police there say the attack was aimed at shia muslims in the town of lost has also been reported in cook in the kurdish held area to the north of the country. u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton has been admitted to a hospital after a blood clot was found during a medical exam she'll spend the next a couple of days being treated for the condition which is thought to have been caused by a concussion she suffered not long ago after she fell at home the sixty five year old is due to end her ten year old america's chief diplomat next year. the physician activists in bahrain have lashed out at a seven year prison terms for police officers convicted of beating a protester to death last year campaigners insist it was torture that the court was too lenient and the government demonstrations in bahrain started early in twenty thousand least sixty people have since died in clashes. well next people of ellen

his guests slug it out in cross talk that's after the break stay with us. tucked in between the russian mainland japan and the second island is the island of minute on named after french seafarer who discovered it it is described as the pride of the sakhalin region we'll take a look at what's in store for us here. until two thousand and four the island was part of the borders own and was completely restricted to this it is now the speak choice place is open to tourists plants and animals are its top attraction. treaty has been exploring the deaths of the world seas for several decades but it's

here at more your own island where he has finally found what he'd been looking for . me the most the water here is very clear the visibility is very good and the underwater world here is extremely rich i've been to many diving locations across the planet including the island of bali but mine are on top of my list while some go to the sakhalin region to enjoy the sights others convert the island's nature's riches into a healthy dollar it is home to the biggest seafood processing factory in russia the tonight shock hundreds of thousands of tons of fish get caught in the nets too late to produce delicious salamon caviar almost and necessary attribute of any feast in russia the owner of the enterprise says a good fishing season can bring in more than a hundred million dollars net profit. and to a large extent this is old to do what succulent offers environmentally the tonight show operates in only and natural high.